[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS]

Herewith some interesting (somewhat) contemporary papers on early windowing systems:

1. There was a conference in the UK early in 1985 discussing the state of window systems on Unix. Much interesting discussion and two talks by James Gosling, one about NeWS (then still called SunDew), and one about what seems to be SunWindows. It would seem then that these were developed almost in parallel.

http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/contents.htm

2. Then there is a 1986 paper by James Gettys, discussing the 18 month journey towards X10. In particular it focuses on the constraints that Unix set on the design of the X system.

https://www.tech-insider.org/unix/research/acrobat/860201-b.pdf

3. Next is the 1989 NeWS book that has a nice overview and history of windowing systems in its chapter 3:

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/sun/NeWS/The_NeWS_Book_1989.pdf

Both the UK conference and the NeWS book mention a Unix kernel-based windowing system done at MIT in 1981 or 1982, “NU" or “NUnix”, by Jack Test. That one had not been mentioned before here and may have been the first graphical windowing work on Unix, preceding the Blit. Who remembers this one?

4. Finally, an undated paper by Stephen Uhler discussing the design of MGR is here:

https://sau.homeip.net/papers/arch.pdf

I’ve not included Rob Pike’s papers, as I assume they are well known on this list.

Some of the above papers may be worthy of stable archiving.

[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Jonathan Gray]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 12:20:52AM +0100, Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS wrote:
> 
> 3. Next is the 1989 NeWS book that has a nice overview and history of windowing systems in its chapter 3:
> 
> http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/sun/NeWS/The_NeWS_Book_1989.pdf
> 
> Both the UK conference and the NeWS book mention a Unix kernel-based windowing system done at MIT in 1981 or 1982, “NU" or “NUnix”, by Jack Test. That one had not been mentioned before here and may have been the first graphical windowing work on Unix, preceding the Blit. Who remembers this one?

"In April 1981, after the initial breadboard Nu Machines were
constructed at M.I.T. and the UNIX operating system was ported to
it, the design was licensed to Western Digital Corporation to be
re-engineered and marketed as a commercial product. By late 1982,
Western Digital had completed the redesign but decided not to enter
the workstation business. Texas Instruments acquired the Nu
Machine/NuBus technology including the original development group
located in Irvine, California."
pg 1

"The second category of software is the Nu Machine Operating System.
This is a port of Bell Lab’s UNIX Operating System. The Nu Machine
Operating System is derived from UNIX, Seventh Edition and contains,
in addition to the normal UNIX commands and kernel, enhancements
from the Berkeley version of UNIX and a proprietary window system
for the Nu Machine video display subsystem. Of course, the Nu Machine
Operating System will not run on Nu Machines that do not contain a
68010 processor board."
pg 35

https://bitsavers.org/pdf/lmi/LMI_Docs/HARDWARE_1.pdf

also mentioned on page 20 of
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/perq/RD_Davis/Davis-PERQ_Workstations_Nov03.pdf

"    MIT Researchers were working on two systems which used the concepts
of the Alto using very different technology. This first was known as the Lisp
Machine project; the MIT Lisp Machine had all the features associated with
a workstation, but was much more expensive. There were two spinoffs of
this project which were less costly lisp machines produced by Symbolics and
LMI.

    The other MIT project which evolved from knowlege of the Alto was
the Nu machine; this was to be a workstation using a Motorolla 68000
microprocessor as its CPU. In various attempts to turn the Nu machine into
a commercially viable product, MIT teamed up with Exxon Enterprises,
then Heath/Schlumberger, and then Western Digital. All of these attempts
failed. The only thing that resulted from this was a deal between MIT
and Western Digital in which Western Digital was to make a Lisp processor
board which would plug into the bus of the Nu machine.

    After some officials from Prime Computer took a tour of MIT and saw
the Nu machine, Lisp Machine, and the Alto, it is runmored that the idea
for the Apollo workstations was formed. The head of engineering at Prime
Computer, William Poduska, started Apollo. Apollo had the added benefit
of much more financial backing than Three Rivers had. Apollo introduced
its Domain processor."

[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Jonathan Gray]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 12:20:52AM +0100, Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS wrote:
> 
> 3. Next is the 1989 NeWS book that has a nice overview and history of windowing systems in its chapter 3:
> 
> http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/sun/NeWS/The_NeWS_Book_1989.pdf
> 
> Both the UK conference and the NeWS book mention a Unix kernel-based windowing system done at MIT in 1981 or 1982, “NU" or “NUnix”, by Jack Test. That one had not been mentioned before here and may have been the first graphical windowing work on Unix, preceding the Blit. Who remembers this one?

mentioned in ;login: Volume 7 Number 4, September 1982
https://archive.org/details/login_september-1982/page/24/mode/2up
Notes on the Boston USENIX and /usr/group Joint Meeting July 1982

"NUnix Window System Description

Jack A. Test
Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Room 414, 545 Technology Square, Cambridge, Mass 02139

The NUnix Window System is a set of software that provides a user a
basic window management mechanism on a high resolution display.
It was developed for use with the MIT Real Time Systems Group NU
Personal Computer, a 68000-based machine which uses a 820x1024 point
raster-scan display, keyboard, and mouse for the user interface.
The NU machines are being used for developing a multi-font editing
system and drawing facility, in several circuit design projects,
and in the development of new operating system concepts.

The user may create multiple overlapping rectangular windows on the
display. Each is associated with an independent UNIX teletype device
and a display device. A window may have up to eight independent and
changeable font maps. The windows are controlled with ioctl calls
and special signals. These allow such actions as creating a new
window, drawing on it, selecting or changing the fonts associated
with it, reading the state of the mouse, obtaining and/or changing
the state of the window, etc. Each window belongs to a process-group
to which a signal is sent whenever there is a change to the attributes
of the window. There is a window-manager program which makes use
of the mouse device to allow the user to select functions from a set of
displayed menus. The user also has access to the display bitmap and a
special graphics routine library.

The NUnix Window System is implemented in a set of device-driver
routines in the UNIX V7 kernel. Most of the window driver code is
machine independent with the exception of two low-level routines
for driving the raster display and keyboard devices respectively.
The NUnix Window System provides a basic window management mechanism
that: (1) is transparent to the vast majority of user programs, (2)
provides a clean user interface without the addition of any new
system calls, and (3) allows user processes to manage their windows
independently and with minimal kernel-imposed limitations.

The code for the NUnix Window System is available from MIT if you
have a UNIX V7 license. The speaker has submitted a paper for the
Conference Proceedings."

goes on to briefly cover:

Design of an Intelligent Bitmap Terminal
Rich Fortier and Tony Lake
Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., 10 Moulton St., Cambridge, Mass 02238

The SUN Workstation
Andreas Bechtolsheim
Sun Microsystems, 2310 Walsh Ave., Sania Clara, CA 95051

Merging Bitmap Graphics and UNIX
Rob Pike
Bell Labs 2C-521, Murray Hill, NJ 07974

a different writeup of these is in:

https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V04.5.pdf
September 1982, Vol IV No V
July Usenix Abstracts

[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Paul Ruizendaal]

> On 30 Jan 2023, at 06:23, Jonathan Gray <jsg@jsg.id.au> wrote:
> 
> mentioned in ;login: Volume 7 Number 4, September 1982
> https://archive.org/details/login_september-1982/page/24/mode/2up
> Notes on the Boston USENIX and /usr/group Joint Meeting July 1982
> 
> "NUnix Window System Description”, Jack A. Test

Thank you for those finds!

The Usenix bibliography gives:

      Author: Jack A. Test
       Title: NUnix Window System Description
       Pages: 45-50
   Publisher: USENIX
 Proceedings: USENIX Conference Proceedings
        Date: Summer 1982
    Location: Boston, MA
 Institution: MIT

My google fu does not drag up those particular proceedings, or those 5 pages. Anybody got access to that?

[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Jonathan Gray]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 04:23:53PM +1100, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> mentioned in ;login: Volume 7 Number 4, September 1982
> https://archive.org/details/login_september-1982/page/24/mode/2up
> Notes on the Boston USENIX and /usr/group Joint Meeting July 1982
> 
> "NUnix Window System Description

...

> 
> goes on to briefly cover:
> 
> Design of an Intelligent Bitmap Terminal
> Rich Fortier and Tony Lake
> Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., 10 Moulton St., Cambridge, Mass 02238
> 
> The SUN Workstation
> Andreas Bechtolsheim
> Sun Microsystems, 2310 Walsh Ave., Sania Clara, CA 95051
> 
> Merging Bitmap Graphics and UNIX
> Rob Pike
> Bell Labs 2C-521, Murray Hill, NJ 07974
> 
> a different writeup of these is in:
> 
> https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V04.5.pdf
> September 1982, Vol IV No V
> July Usenix Abstracts

more from
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/bibliography/byDate.html
though some of these are character based

      Author: Andreas Bechtolsheim
       Title: The SUN Workstation
       Pages: 61
   Publisher: USENIX
 Proceedings: USENIX Conference Proceedings
        Date: Summer 1982
    Location: Boston, MA
 Institution: Sun Microsystems
       Other: Abstract only

      Author: Richard Fortier
      Author: Anthony Lake
       Title: Design of an Intelligent Bitmap Terminal
       Pages: 51-60
   Publisher: USENIX
 Proceedings: USENIX Conference Proceedings
        Date: Summer 1982
    Location: Boston, MA
 Institution: Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.

      Author: Rob Pike
       Title: Merging Bitmap Graphics and UNIX
       Pages: 61
   Publisher: USENIX
 Proceedings: USENIX Conference Proceedings
        Date: Summer 1982
    Location: Boston, MA
 Institution: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
       Other: Abstract only

      Author: Jack A. Test
       Title: NUnix Window System Description
       Pages: 45-50
   Publisher: USENIX
 Proceedings: USENIX Conference Proceedings
        Date: Summer 1982
    Location: Boston, MA
 Institution: MIT

      Author: David Mankins
      Author: Daniel Franklin
       Title: A Simple Window Management Facility for the UNIX Timesharing System
       Pages: 203-228
   Publisher: USENIX
 Proceedings: USENIX Conference Proceedings
        Date: Summer 1983
    Location: Toronto, Ont.
 Institution: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.
https://archive.org/details/login_sept83_issue/page/n23/mode/2up (abstract)

      Author: Michael Shantz
       Title: Graphics Standards for Personal Workstations
       Pages: 257-259
   Publisher: USENIX
 Proceedings: USENIX Conference Proceedings
        Date: Winter 1983
    Location: San Diego, CA
 Institution: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
https://archive.org/details/1983-proceedings-unicom-san-diego/page/257/mode/2up

      Author: Steven R. Evans
       Title: Windows with 4.2BSD
       Pages: 260
   Publisher: USENIX
 Proceedings: USENIX Conference Proceedings
        Date: Winter 1983
    Location: San Diego, CA
 Institution: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
       Other: Abstract only
https://archive.org/details/1983-proceedings-unicom-san-diego/page/259/mode/2up

      Author: Rex McDowell
       Title: A UNIX-Based Color Graphics Workstation
       Pages: 115-122
   Publisher: USENIX
 Proceedings: USENIX UniForum Conference Proceedings
        Date: January 17-20, 1984
    Location: Washington D.C.
 Institution: Metheus Corporation
https://archive.org/details/1984-proceedings-uni-forum-dc/page/116/mode/2up

      Author: Robert J.K. Jacob
       Title: User-Level Window Manager for UNIX
       Pages: 123-134
   Publisher: USENIX
 Proceedings: USENIX UniForum Conference Proceedings
        Date: January 17-20, 1984
    Location: Washington D.C.
 Institution: Naval Research Laboratory
https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~jacob/papers/uniforum.pdf
https://archive.org/details/1984-proceedings-uni-forum-dc/page/122/mode/2up

      Author: Peter E. Collins
       Title: WINDX - Windows for the UNIX Environment
       Pages: 159-165
   Publisher: USENIX
 Proceedings: USENIX Conference Proceedings
        Date: Summer 1984
    Location: Salt Lake City, UT
 Institution: Ithaca Intersystems, Inc.
https://archive.org/details/1984-proceedings-summer-salt-lake-city/page/158/mode/2up

      Author: Chris Torek
      Author: Mark Weiser
       Title: The Maryland Window System
       Pages: 166-172
   Publisher: USENIX
 Proceedings: USENIX Conference Proceedings
        Date: Summer 1984
    Location: Salt Lake City, UT
 Institution: University of Maryland
https://archive.org/details/1984-proceedings-summer-salt-lake-city/page/166/mode/2up
https://archive.org/download/CDROM_March92/CDROM_March92.cdr/UNIX_C%2FLANGUAGS%2FC%2FMW.TAR
https://archive.org/details/CDROM_March92
derived in part from Gosling emacs
mw.tar includes source and windows.nr -me paper

[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Paul Ruizendaal]

> On 30 Jan 2023, at 06:23, Jonathan Gray <jsg@jsg.id.au> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 12:20:52AM +0100, Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Both the UK conference and the NeWS book mention a Unix kernel-based windowing system done at MIT in 1981 or 1982, “NU" or “NUnix”, by Jack Test. That one had not been mentioned before here and may have been the first graphical windowing work on Unix, preceding the Blit. Who remembers this one?
> 
> mentioned in ;login: Volume 7 Number 4, September 1982
> https://archive.org/details/login_september-1982/page/24/mode/2up
> Notes on the Boston USENIX and /usr/group Joint Meeting July 1982
> 
> "NUnix Window System Description, Jack A. Test
> Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
> Room 414, 545 Technology Square, Cambridge, Mass 02139

Appendix E in this report from the University of Illinois describes a port of NUnix to similar hardware. It also contains a walkthrough of a sample workstation session with 17 screen prints:

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19840008755/downloads/19840008755.pdf

Very informative.

[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Chris Hanson]

On Jan 29, 2023, at 9:23 PM, Jonathan Gray <jsg@jsg.id.au> wrote:
> 
> a different writeup of these is in:
> 
> https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V04.5.pdf
> September 1982, Vol IV No V
> July Usenix Abstracts

I see this also has a bit for Brad Cox's "The Object Oriented Pre-Compiler: Programming Smalltalk 80 Methods in the C Language" which continues to be relevant today though I believe that presentation still used the (quite ugly) original syntax for what became Objective-C.

  -- Chris

[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Lars Brinkhoff]

Paul Ruizendaal wrote:
> Both the UK conference and the NeWS book mention a Unix kernel-based
> windowing system done at MIT in 1981 or 1982, “NU" or “NUnix”, by Jack
> Test.

Sounds like Steve Ward's Nu Machine.

[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Jonathan Gray]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 12:20:52AM +0100, Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS wrote:
> 
> Herewith some interesting (somewhat) contemporary papers on early windowing systems:
> 
> 1. There was a conference in the UK early in 1985 discussing the state of window systems on Unix. Much interesting discussion and two talks by James Gosling, one about NeWS (then still called SunDew), and one about what seems to be SunWindows. It would seem then that these were developed almost in parallel.
> 
> http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/contents.htm

Another window system was Whitechapel Computer Works' Oriel.

"During 1985 major developments took place, mainly on the software front.
A factor of 6 improvement in graphics performance was obtained, and the
Oriel state-of-the-art window manager developed. The Newcastle
Connection and SUN's NFS have also been announced as products, available
on 42NIX, the Whitechapel release of Berkeley BSD 4.2."
http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/acd/sus/perq_papers/perq_external/p003.htm

http://www.cpu-ns32k.net/Whitechapel.html
has a photo of the GUI running on a MG-1 with NS32016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMQ9EvZLSos
"Booting 42nix 2.5 on a Whitechapel Computer Works MG-1"
from Tom Stepleton who also maintained
https://web.archive.org/web/20210625124716/http://mg-1.uk/

https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1985-02/1985_02_BYTE_10-02_Computing_and_the_Sciences/page/n378/mode/1up
has an article on Whitechapel Computer Works and the MG-1, before they
changed from Genix to 42nix
"The operating system is Genix, a Berkeley 4.1 UNIX customized by WCW to
support the MG-1's graphics abilities"

http://web.archive.org/web/20030205212745/http://www.galactic.co.uk/iainf/mg1.html
"The WCW MG-1 was launched in September 1984
..
The monitor was a large (17 inch) 1024x800 bit-mapped monochrome screen,
and there was hardware support for up to 16 mask-shift raster operations
at once, modelled after the 3RCC/ICL PERQ raster-ops.
...
It ran a kernel based window system called ORIEL (and a SunTools like
graphics library called ANGEL), which took full advantage of the
raster-op hardware."

[TUHS] Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?

[Jonathan Gray]

On Mon, Feb 06, 2023 at 06:01:49PM +1100, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 12:20:52AM +0100, Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS wrote:
> > 
> > Herewith some interesting (somewhat) contemporary papers on early windowing systems:
> > 
> > 1. There was a conference in the UK early in 1985 discussing the state of window systems on Unix. Much interesting discussion and two talks by James Gosling, one about NeWS (then still called SunDew), and one about what seems to be SunWindows. It would seem then that these were developed almost in parallel.
> > 
> > http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/contents.htm
> 
> Another window system was Whitechapel Computer Works' Oriel.

further described in:
Dominic Sweetman - A Modular Window System for Unix
http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/p007.htm

Later there were MIPS machines, such as the R2000 based
Hitech 10 which ran UMIPS (4.3BSD) with a choice of X11 and NeWS.
http://web.archive.org/web/20030205212745/http://www.galactic.co.uk/iainf/mg1.html
http://www.umips.net/riscos/index.html

Dominic Sweetman and Nigel Stephens of Whitechapel would
later go on to be involved in Algorithmics, which was acquired by
MIPS Technologies in 2002 and became MIPS UK.
https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3231/doc/R3000.pdf
https://www.linux-mips.org/wiki/Algorithmics

[TUHS] window systems (was Re: Earliest UNIX Workstations?)

[Jonathan Gray]

On Mon, Feb 06, 2023 at 07:39:42PM +1100, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 06, 2023 at 06:01:49PM +1100, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 12:20:52AM +0100, Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS wrote:
> > > 
> > > Herewith some interesting (somewhat) contemporary papers on early windowing systems:
> > > 
> > > 1. There was a conference in the UK early in 1985 discussing the state of window systems on Unix. Much interesting discussion and two talks by James Gosling, one about NeWS (then still called SunDew), and one about what seems to be SunWindows. It would seem then that these were developed almost in parallel.
> > > 
> > > http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/contents.htm
> > 
> > Another window system was Whitechapel Computer Works' Oriel.
> 
> further described in:
> Dominic Sweetman - A Modular Window System for Unix
> http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/inf/literature/books/wm/p007.htm

there is a survey of various window systems
SunWindows, Oriel, Andrew, X, in:

http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/itc/CMU-ITC-045.pdf
Tutorial Materials
Usenix Technical Conference
Denver, Colorado
January 15-17, 1986

#7 Windowing Systems Implementations
David S. H. Rosenthal

also mentions
"Other Kernel-Based Systems
The window system developed at LucasFilm by Sam Leffler and Mike Hawley,
and described at the Portland Usenix, is another example of a
kernel-based system.  It supports an impressive user interface toolkit,
similar to that on the Blit."
Michael J. Hawley, Samuel J. Leffler - Windows for UNIX at Lucasfilm
https://archive.org/details/1985-proceedings-summer-portland/page/392/mode/2up
paper has some pictures of it